The Icarus Project is a support network and education project by and for people who experience the world in ways that are often diagnosed as mental illness. We advance social justice by fostering mutual aid practices that reconnect healing and collective liberation. We transform ourselves through transforming the world around us.

Not everything is urgent: Prioritize what is urgent. Divide it from what is non-urgent, or what needs to be done today versus what can feasibly be done tomorrow.

Ideas for affirmations and emotional resets:

Practice observing when anxiety arises. Yours and others’. Practice witnessing fear when it shows up. Yours and others’. Practice naming the different emotions and thought patterns experienced throughout the day. It will help you to understand which to follow and which to just watch.

Before turning on your computer, say three things that you’re grateful for. Or keep naming things that you’re thankful for while your computer warms up and turns on. See how many you can come up with!

Put on a song and get up and dance for a couple minutes.

At the end of the day, take a minute to clean up your work space. Maybe splurge on some fresh flowers to put in a vase to brighten your day.

After you shut your computer down for the day, sit in your chair, close your eyes, and take five deep breaths.

Say no if you’re not in the mood to get a drink with friends, have people over for dinner, or go out.

Make your bed. Get some decorative throw pillows if they’ll make you smile.

Take time to do something artsy, like drawing or putting on music and dancing around.

While you’re washing dishes or brushing your teeth, tell yourself three things you like about yourself. Try to come up with different ideas every day.

Before going to sleep, close your eyes and think of a happy memory.

Before you get out of bed in the morning, close your eyes and think about what kind of day you want to have, maybe choosing some positive words to keep in mind for the day. Listen to your emotions and what they are telling you.

The distinguishing feature between someone who gaslights and someone who doesn’t is an internalized paradigm of ownership. Gaslighting only requires a belief that it is acceptable to overwrite another person’s reality. It happens when the person holding that belief feels threatened.

Manipulation usually centers around a direct or indirect threat that is made in order to influence another person’s behavior. Gaslighting uses threats as well

Gaslighting, when effective, will actually damage your trust in yourself and your experience of reality.

It’s normal to lose your memory when you’re being gaslighted.

No one should use shame or fear to try to get you to change. When they do this, they’re not asking for change – they’re asking for control.

I would like to propose that one solution to feeling less susceptible to gaslighting is to learn how to identify the objective of a conversation.A conversation with the purpose of mutuality should not make you feel afraid, ashamed, disoriented, or confused.

You don’t have to figure out what it is they’re doing, you only have to figure out what you are feeling. You only have to know when mutuality is no longer the objective, and learn how to stop engaging when that happens.